When our oldest child was five, he came to his mother and asked her for a box.

"What do you need it for?" she asked.

"Packing," he said.

"Packing? Where are you going?"

"For when we move," he said.

"We aren't moving," she said.

He looked at her in consternation. "I already had my birthday in this house,"
he said. "It's almost my birthday again."

Only then did she realize that in his entire life, he had never spent two
birthdays in the same house. He did not share our adult understanding that
this was about going to graduate school, getting a job, and then moving from
rental to rental till we had room for our growing family.

He assumed that this was how things were supposed to be -- the Card family
moved every year.

Sometimes traditions just happen. An accidental pattern becomes the rule.

It's like the old Reader's Digest anecdote about the woman whose husband
asks her why she always cuts both ends off a roast before she puts it in the
pot. "It's perfectly good meat," he says.

"I don't know," she answers. "It's how my mother always did it." She called
her mother, who had the same answer.

Finally, a call to grandma brought the truth to light. "Don't you remember that
single pan I had for cooking? It was so small that I had to cut the ends off any
good-sized roast in order to make it fit."

Not knowing why the thing was done, her daughter and granddaughter were
continuing to follow the pattern.

Traditions have enormous staying power; the very fact that this is "how it's
always been done" becomes satisfying for its own sake.

This is especially true during the holidays, when children come to expect that
certain things will happen again, just like in past years. It's not a real
Christmas tree unless there's a train around it! None of us actually likes
cranberry sauce, but it isn't Thanksgiving unless there's some of it on the
table!

Since traditions are going to form -- and often get passed down through the
generations -- why not invent or choose traditions that you know will do your
family good?

In one family, a little Swedish figurine of a horse starts "randomly" appearing
atop one plate or another at suppertime. Whoever gets the horse, during the
meal everyone talks about good things they have noticed about that person
during the past year -- their achievements great and small, the things they've
learned, the progress they've made.

By New Year's everyone knows that they are noticed and known ... and loved.

In our family, as soon as the tree went up, we set up a little wooden manger
near it. Each night, the children were given one straw for each act of kindness,
patience, or obedience and for every positive achievement. They then placed
the straws in the manger, gradually making a comfortable place for the Christ
child to be laid.

In one large family, the parents wrap enough fun (and cheap) presents for
everyone to pick one. Then Dad reads a short Christmas story (like "The Night
Before Christmas" -- they don't involved scriptural stories in this present-centered game!).

They pick two frequently occurring words (like "and" or "the"). Each time the
first word is spoken in the story, they pass the presents one person to the left.
When the other word is read, they pass the presents to the right. At the end of
the story, everyone opens the present they happen to be holding.

Our friend Kathy Jensen runs an Elf Shop for her grandchildren. In the
weeks leading up to Christmas, the children earn tokens (canning lids with
their name written on them) for helping around the house or doing kind things.

Then Grandma arrives on her annual Christmas visit and opens her Elf Shop,
where the kids can redeem their tokens to buy gifts for their brothers and
sisters and parents.

All year, Grandma has been buying or making small, inexpensive gifts for the
shop, and of course she adjusts prices to fit the number of tokens each child
has earned.

Then, after they have bought gifts for other people with the tokens they earned,
all the kids get to go to Little Bear's Bookstore -- which is stocked with age-appropriate books that Grandma brought with her. Each child gets to pick out
a free book for themselves.

My parents learned early on that they could change traditions that weren't
working properly. When their firstborn was old enough to understand
Christmas at all, she was showered with presents. But late on Christmas Day,
she asked, "Mommy and Daddy, what did you give me?"

From then on, Santa Claus was given permission to bring only one gift per
child, plus whatever fit into the stocking. Everything else was clearly labeled
as coming from Dad and Mom, with love. They felt that little children might
learn gift-giving better if they see that gifts mostly come from the people they
know best, and not from a stranger.

My wife and I, after a disastrous first Thankgiving dinner together ("O dear
husband of mine, did you actually turn the oven on?"), gradually developed a
whole set of kitchen traditions.

I cook the turkey, basting it with highly seasoned butter; the resulting juices
(well-skimmed, of course) become the flavored basis of the gravy. I also make
the stuffing (which never goes inside the turkey).

Meanwhile, besides her always-perfect gravy, my wife makes fruit salad in a
creamy pineapple sauce we only get once a year. (She made the pies the night
before, after I roasted the first turkey -- we always have two, so there are plenty
of leftovers for all the families in attendance.)

We have learned how to rotate items into and out of the ovens and onto and off
of the stove. It's like a kind of ballet, each of us helping with the other's jobs
when they require more than two hands (as when I have to pour off, strain, and
separate the turkey juices).

This annual dance is one of the finest pleasures of the year for my wife and me.
Not every married couple can share a kitchen, let alone enjoy working together
every step of the way.

This year we have enough guests coming for Thanksgiving that we'll have two
tables. The youngest person there will be fourteen -- there's really no "kids'
table" this year. So how could we sort out where everyone would sit?

The solution is a new tradition: The Turkey Trot. We bought a couple of
dozen little turkey place-card holders. We'll set them out hours before the
meal, and then everyone is free to move any of the turkeys from place to place
and from table to table.

If everyone gets into the spirit of the thing, it will be almost random whom they
end up sitting with. And everyone will know that neither dining table is
"secondary" -- any place is as good as any other. If it works as planned, the
Turkey Trot will be part of every two-table Thanksgiving dinner.

This is how traditions are made, and grow, and change to fit the needs of a
family. Ask other people what they do, especially if you're just starting out
your family, and choose the ideas you like best -- or invent your own.

Even if you live close enough to share holidays with extended family members,
you can still create traditions for your own immediate family that can coexist
with the traditions of your hosts.

All family traditions have at least one message in common: "This is how we do
it, even though it might be different from every other family in the world." That
is a fine precedent for your children to grow up with.

It helps them be ready for the big one: "As for me and my house, we will serve
the Lord."

Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's
Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and
younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.

Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary
fantasy (Magic Street,Enchantment,Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables,Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker
(beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and
scripts.

Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and
Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s.
Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs
plays. He also teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.

Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife,
Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.